Explorers & Outsiders
by Cheesus333
Summary: After an unusual page in the book seizes Dipper's attention, the Pines set off to explore the enigmatic town of Night Vale. But outsiders in this strange town rarely stick around - or worse still, they never leave.
1. Chapter 1

In a remote, unremarkable stretch of sandy wastes in the United States, the aggressively hot wind skims dirt into the air where it rushes, suspended, as if scooped into the hands of frantic, rushing ghosts. Clouds are known to converge here, glowing and – it has been speculated – sentient, though these are witnessed only by those indigenous to the inhospitable desert. They swirl into an angry vortex and below them, far below, sits a town.

Night Vale is a secluded settlement, perched almost uncomfortably on a stretch of highway as though it had simply decided one day to sit there and never get up. Its clusters of low, dilapidated buildings shelter the peculiar and precocious alike. Parks spatter the town, although it would be difficult to recognise them as such for they contain no facet of life or greenery. The streets sit quiet and empty, by night and day – when a pedestrian must travel, they do so by scurrying through the ghost town, their eyes kept firmly to themselves. The buzz of helicopters overhead can occasionally be heard, permeating a near-omnipresent wailing that sounds to the ear like a child crying for a mother who is already dead. It is a peaceful town; it is a secret town. When outsiders come, they do not stay past a day or they never leave – there are no further options. This is a story about two such outsiders.

Night has fallen, though the sad remnants of twilight yet linger on the western horizon, awaiting the show and wishing they could stay to watch. It is dark enough for torches, and so a flashlight cuts like a scythe through the dark. Shadows fall where it hits, silhouettes dragged backwards through the dirt. The torch is attached to a hand which, in turn, is attached to a boy. He speaks.

"Mabel." His tone is insistent and more than a little annoyed. "Mabel, stop squeezing my hand."

"I can't help it!" Whines a voice close behind him, affected by the hint of a lisp. "I'm _scaaared_." At this, she squeezes her brother's hand tighter, causing his brow to lower in frustration.

"We _have _to check this place out, Mabel," responds the boy, exasperated. "I've checked the book a thousand times, it just says 'run'. Nothing else. Just 'run'. Aren't you curious?"

"No, Dipper," answers an increasingly desperate sibling, "I'm _scared_. I want to go home!"

"We're just checking it out. We can go home afterwards. If it makes you feel any better, you can hold the torch." The beam judders skywards for a second, before falling back to the earth with a renewed shakiness. The hand to which it is now attached quivers visibly, though it is far from cold.

"I don't feel any better," Mabel sulks. "I still want to go home." Dipper abandons the conversation, peering into the darkness ahead. They are near the town, and it has been in sight for a while, but despite this they can't make anything specific out. The buildings themselves appear inexplicably hazy, blurred at the edges, and the signs are illegible. A low hum sits below the background noise of cicadas and wind, though it has no apparent source. Before long, the shaky torchlight splashes against a building's wall and the disc of light it projects begins to grow.

"Can you read this sign? I can't... make it out..." Dipper mutters, half to himself, as he squints at a sign mounted upon the side of the closest building. The words actually say "Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex", yet he cannot understand them. They are not in an alien language. They are not especially dim or intricate in font. They are simply impossible to read. Dipper decides to ignore them; his twin follows, her eyes on the sign as she passes it.

The hum has intensified now, and taken the form of what could be electrical current coursing through wires nearby, or a generator turning fuel into power. It remains hard to pin down, though, and the twins' focus is on the buildings themselves. The storefronts are all adorned with signs. All are in English and in plain view, yet all are equally incoherent. Dipper considers them for a moment, before his thoughts are shattered by a sharp, electronic crackle. He turns to it and immediately finds the source of the hum: an appliance store's window is arrayed with row after row of radios, and these have been left on overnight. All come to life simultaneously, and all communicate the same smooth-voiced, inappropriately serene message. The man delivering the broadcast seems pleasant in stark contrast with his words, and there is an impression that he is watching the twins yet there are no apparent means of doing so. He speaks, and he says this:

"Two twins have entered a strange and distant town, one compelled by its mystery and the other uni_mag_inably repulsed by it. The darkness invites them with an extended hand, and the former takes it in his own, dragging his sister in with him. They wonder how the voice on the radio knows this; they scan the area around them, but find nothing. There is nothing to find. The voice – _my _voice – asks for nothing but their trust. Well, and their patience." There is a pause, only a moment, as if the voice was licking its lips in preparation for a line well-rehearsed and often spoken, an involuntary reflex drawn from muscle memory.

"Welcome to Night Vale."


	2. Chapter 2

The radios died, crackling out one by one in quick succession. Neither twin could manage a single word, and Mabel's nervous tremours subsided instantly into petrified immobility. One word bounced back and forth through Dipper's mind in time with his thundering heartbeat: the same simple imperative that adorned the page that had brought him here to begin with. An image formed in his head - of gripping Mabel's hand with panicked ferocity and running, running, running away from this nightmarish town back into the darkened wastes around it. But, upon further consideration, getting here in the day was hard enough; getting back in the dark would be impossible. It seemed their only option, he realised with horror, was to press deeper into the town.

However, that was barely a fraction of the real reason the Pines lingered in Night Vale. The voice on the radio was right: Dipper, in spite of himself, was mesmerised by the mystery the town presented. He simply couldn't leave it unsolved. He walked further down the road – hesitantly, at first, but soon peering through the store windows from behind the glare of his flashlight. Mabel followed, never relinquishing his free hand.

"Where is everyone?" She asked after they cleared the first stretch of road, arriving at a crossroads. To their left and right, more businesses and buildings, unidentifiable in the thick, imminent darkness, stretched beyond sight. Directly ahead of them seemed much the same. Without a particular destination, the Pines glanced indecisively from street to street.

"Well, it's late... maybe they're all asleep?" Dipper responded, though he was sceptical even as he said it.

"Maybe..." Mabel scanned for faces in the windows, but found nothing until a dim light from an alleyway caught her attention. "Hey!" She exclaimed, suddenly fixated on the light. "What's _that?" _They approached the cranny between two tall, old structures, sweeping the torchlight around inside. It fell quickly upon a small pocket radio. The case was cracked and dirty, but a dim light indicated that it still worked. Dipper picked it up, fiddling with the scan wheel.

"What are you doing?" Mabel asked, peeking at it curiously.

"Looking for that voice from before. He's broadcasting on the radio, right? Maybe he can help us out. I just need to find... the right frequency..." Dipper furrowed his brow in concentration, before a harsh burst of static made his eyes widen in shock.

"Ah! They've found me," exclaimed the voice on the radio. The twins yelped in unison. "Well, they've found my _station_," it continued. "Needless to say, listeners, I'm not actually in the radio itself." Dipper was determined not to let any answers elude him and, regaining himself, immediately pressed the voice with questions.

"How did you know we were here? How did you know all that stuff before?"

"For those just tuning in," the voice calmly replied, apparently ignoring him, "I will reiterate the following statement from the Sheriff himself: 'Do not leave your homes. Do not approach the windows. Ignore any sounds you think you hear because you are wrong. There are no children roaming the streets of Night Vale. That is all.' After issuing this message, the Sheriff left the station but _did _mention on his way out that he had something pressing to attend to." The Pines regarded the radio in silence; the voice drowned out the muffled footsteps approaching slowly from behind them. "Gee Night Vale, I don't know about you, but I think this foolishness about _chil_dren on the streets is just ri_dic_ulous. If there _were _children out there, and they were, oh, I don't know, hunched over a radio in an alleyway, then they'd certainly have to be on their guard! The streets are no place for children at night. Or at all." At that, another burst of static silenced the radio. The red light, already dim, was slowly extinguished and Dipper sighed in frustration. He tucked the radio into his pocket, when he felt Mabel shaking his arm back and forward.

"What is it?" He half turned to his sister, but something made him stop. A sound. A sound much closer than the distant, ambiguous noise of the town sleeping or the desert breeze lapping at the walls. It was breathing. Slow. Heavy. Bestial.

"Dipper..." she whispered, terrified. He heard her gulp. "There's someone _there_."

Her brother's limbs seized up as he readied himself and, with an involuntary grunt of fear, he spun to face behind them.

Nothing.

"Wh..." he began, scanning left and right. There were the walls, the street and the sky, but nothing else in sight. But there was still breathing.

"Can you hear it?" He whispered urgently, and saw her nod.

"Dipper," Mabel urged, beginning to walk away from the presence. Her brother followed. He remembered the book's advice and, this time, he took it.

The twins bolted through the alley, around a corner which shortly threw them back onto open street. Over the road, a high wall stretched far in both directions into the night. Something about it struck her, but there was no time to investigate it. Far away to their right, Mabel could see the road end abruptly at the foot of a featureless building; to the left, the road disappeared into a sandstorm so thick that its other side couldn't be seen. Both choices seemed doomed, but the breathing hadn't left. They had to pick one.

"This way!" Mabel cried, dragging Dipper towards the dark wall of sand that hurtled, vortex-like, at the end of the road. They ran, stumbling on their own feet and on cracks on the road, gasps for breath coming fast and never escaping the sound of heavy panting and the pounding of that third set of footsteps close behind. The sand approached, closer with every fraction of second, and there was no time to shield their eyes or wonder how they would clear this obstacle because before they could think they were inside. Air gave way to sand, which filled their eyes and mouths and made them cough and stumble, blind, to the floor before...

The storm lifted. They stood up. They were somewhere else entirely.

It was too dark to see anything. Though Night Vale had been dim, the occasional streetlight and the omnipresent watchful glow of the stars and the moon kept them in visibility; here, there were no such graces. Worse still, there was no respite from the awful sound that permeated the air: a hellish howling pierced with shrieks as though banshees and wraiths beat against the insides of their very ears. Mabel collapsed to the floor - her hands clasped uselessly over her ears and her eyes squeezed uselessly shut – and as she hit the ground she felt something sticky beneath her. The ground was soft, like damp earth but smoother, and covered in a warm, viscous liquid that was almost like-

A hand fumbled over her hair, finding her hand and gripping it firmly before she was heaved back into the storm. Dirt buffeted her skin for a moment, overwhelming her disoriented senses, before she fell onto Night Vale's asphalt, coughing and spluttering sand onto the road. When she could see again she noticed Dipper sat next to her, frantically rubbing his eyes. After a moment more, she noticed something else: the now familiar sound of close, invisible breathing.

"It's still here!" She yelled, flailing her arms defensively at the air around and in front of her.

"It's not _anywhere_, Mabel" Dipper answered, feigning calmness. "Listen." Mabel listened. The wall of sand roared close behind her, and electric current hummed through the underground wires below. A manhole a few yards away covered the constant, muted gush of running water and Dipper's exhausted panting was a little out of time with her own. But where was the breathing? She could hear it, but it didn't seem to have a particular direction.

With a start, she realised.

"It's in my _head!_" She screeched, gripping her thick hair in her hands and compacting her legs into her body. As if in response, Dipper's pocket burst alive with static which then cut into a long, sustained whine. This subsided shortly, and the voice spoke once again. As ever, it spoke calmly and pleasantly, the tones carefully considered to achieve the most soothing effect on the ears.

"Listeners in the downtown area should be aware of a sudden _sand_storm raging by the Dog Park, which may or may not have connections to that loathsome settlement, Desert Bluffs. This is surely an attempt to sabotage our fair town and should be paid no heed by any good citizen. Of course, since everyone should be locked indoors, this message will not apply to _most_ of you." The twins glanced at each other. "Furthermore, a psychic gorilla has been reported missing from the nearby Night Vale Zoo. The beast likely escaped due to an absence of any actual containment measures, as it is currently unknown how to cage animals that exist in the astral plane. Anyone who hears _bestial_ noises in their head should think very hard about a jungle, which the animal will _hope_fully then get lost in. Any afflicted individual should under no circumstances think about meat or dead animals, as this will en_rage_ the beast, and _no_-one likes an unhappy psychic gorilla. No-one." As suddenly as it had come to life, the radio crackled away again. The breathing persisted, and having emptied his mouth of sand Dipper finally spoke.

"There's something wrong with this place." He mumbled, dusting sand grains off his bodywarmer as Mabel combed the same out of her hair. "Let's try what he said, the jungle thing." They closed their eyes, focusing on the breathing in their heads and visualising a dense, tropical wood; presently, heavy footfalls mingled with the sound of crushed undergrowth as the beast – whatever it was – bounded into the distance. Before it left completely, Dipper couldn't stop the image of an animal carcass from flickering through his distracted mind, and a sudden simian screech forced his focus once again. He breathed a sigh of relief when the footfalls finally dropped into silence.

"Now we can focus. Maybe if we find the guy on the radio, he can help us out?" Dipper considered. "He seems to know what's going on here."

"But how?" Mabel asked. The twins stood up, and scanned the street. Ahead of them, the dead end denied any chance of following the road, and the alley from which they'd fled didn't promise much either. Suddenly, Mabel interjected. "What about there?" she suggested, indicating the high wall following the road to their left.

"I don't see how we could get over that..." Dipper replied, eyeing the wall from base to peak.

"Not _over_, silly – through!"

"Mabel, be serious, please."

"Look!" Dipper's sister urged him towards the wall and, reluctantly, he complied. She jerked a finger at an unremarkable section of wall. "See!?" Dipper stared at her, dumbfounded. Then, to his even greater confusion, she gave an exasperated grunt and walked straight through it.

"How did-!?" Dipper stammered, his eyes wide. "Mabel?!"

"Can't you _see_ it?" Her voice was clear, despite the wall that was (or perhaps was not) obstructing her words. "The gate! Right _here_! The one that says 'Dog P-"

Mid-sentence, she stopped. There was no shriek, or sounds of resistance. Nothing. She was speaking, and then she was not.

"Mabel?!" Dipper cried out in panic. Instinctively, he rushed towards the wall but his hands met solid brick. He beat it with his fists, the rough stone grazing his skin and drawing blood in thin scratches. "Mabel, where are you?!" He screamed her name again and again, beating his hands raw against the wall for what could have been minutes, but there was no reply. Whatever gate she had stepped through was inaccessible to him, and the voice of his sister before she was cut off was already a memory that ebbed away with every second like sand in a rising tide.

Dipper sank to the base of the wall, despondent. His bruised and beaten hands fell to the ground, followed shortly by silent tears rolling off his cheeks. He was alone.


End file.
